Small
Autonomous
Rotorcraft,
About to leave for Mars.
No, it cannot fly through space.
It hitchhikes for the ride.
Once its rover host
Touches down
And backs off quite a ways,
Will relay orders from the Earth,
To test it makes the grade.
Can solar cells keep it charged,
And keep it warm at night?
Can it rise three meters high
On a ninety second flight?
Then we’ll have a helicopter
On another world.
As thrilling
A capability
As any that I’ve heard.

Kate Rauner

It may seem like a small step, but Mars’ atmosphere is like flying 100,000 ft above Earth’s surface, about three times the height of commercial airplanes. Many outlets cover this element of the Mars 2020 mission, including Reuters

Bella Lugosi makes a fine Mad Scientist – who maybe created our simulation in the first original universe – if there was one

Extraordinary evidence
Makes extraordinary claims.
Extraordinary people
Will sometimes do the same.

A big enough memory
In a big enough machine
Perhaps could simulate
The universe I’ve seen.

Ancient Greek philosophers
Knew nothing of our chips and RAM,
Yet said that if I cannot see,
I cannot know
that
I am.

Until someone can falsify,
Propose a test to tell,
The question is philosophy,
A summer dream’s intel.
A slice of heaven, pinch of hell,
Rhapsodizing as I tell
How to ride a bit-byte swell
From deep inside my techno-well.
Logging off.

Kate Rauner

Thanks to skeptoid, one of my favorite sites. They don’t usually venture into philosophy, but when they do, it’s fun.

Hearing is not listening,
Seeing’s not perceiving.
To watch is not to memorize
The data you’re receiving.

Why remember if you can
Google what you need?
A password’s all you must retain,
What’s needed to succeed.

Kate Rauner

Thanks to theatlantic.com for why I can’t remember anything. This has been happening to me ever since my first calendar watch made it impossible to recall the date. I feel so much better now – I think.

Not to mention oddly high
Concentrations to be found
Of antimony, lead, and chrome,
Rare earths, and gold within the ground.

Sudden population booms
Of crinoids and certain trilobites,
Indicator species these,
Increased to
impressive heights.

Shape of lipids well preserved
In geo-chemistry,
Not mono-chiral indicates
They were made
synthetically.

Until the late Devonian,
When life in deep oceans died,
Anoxia that changed the seas
Sent glaciers south to crush their lives.

No, there are no real facts
Silurians
once industrialized,
But to think of traces
they could have left
May help us search the starry skies.

by Kate Rauner

Silurian fossils, but, no, that’s not a Silurian coin. It’s just there to indicate size.

Thanks to theatlantic for their story on this study published in the International Journal of Astrobiology: could we tell if an advanced civilization existed on Earth long before humans, even before mammals?

Such conjecture may help us ponder extraterrestrials. As the authors say, “While much idle speculation and late night chatter has been devoted to this question, we are unaware of previous serious treatments of the problem of detectability of prior terrestrial industrial civilizations in the geologic past.” Download the pdf for yourself.